Renesas, Redpine Roll out ‘Wi-Fi In A Box'

Engineers who want to add wireless capabilities to their
products may now have a quicker way to get the job done.

A new
wireless connectivity solution from Redpine
Signals, Inc. and Renesas Electronics
America Inc. makes it faster and easier for engineers to incorporate IEEE
802.11n Wi-Fi into embedded systems. Renasas says the solution could be
employed in such applications as home automation, security panels, factory
automation and countless other wireless communication systems.

"A typical
timeline for adding wireless connectivity is six to eight months," notes Rohan
Joginpalli, product manager for Redpine Signals, Inc. "But with this solution,
we have customers who are doing it in one month. In some cases, I can even get
it working in two days."

Redpine
engineers say their system has 18 patents on it, with 50 more in the works.

The RS-RX62N-2201
Wi-Fi Starter Kit is intended to be a user-friendly development platform for
engineers who want to develop applications on Renesas' RX62N microcontroller (MCU). It includes an API library for controlling the
Wi-Fi module, sample code and a suite of development tools for coding and
debugging.

"It's
essentially Wi-Fi in a box," says Ritesh Tyagi, director of microcontroller
products and solutions marketing at Renesas. "They can take this, connect it to
their existing board and have embedded Wi-Fi."

Renesas
engineers say that the Redpine/Renesas solution removes many of the concerns
that developers have when adding Wi-Fi to an existing product. "They don't have
to worry about signal routing, FCC certification or software integration,"
Tyagi says. "If they want to add Wi-Fi, most of work is already done for them."

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